Towering over Hollywood Forever is a large rotating icon of the globe, clearly intended to indicate the imminence of Escape to Earth. Dagmar’s installed a gargantuan amount of bandwidth here, and as soon as I click the icon a new screen springs up. I’m surprised by how many items are available besides the film. There are games, making-of videos, biographies of the principals. You can join the project’s own social-networking sites. There is a link to a biography of someone referred to as “Mahir Mukerjee, global superstar.” I flatter myself that I’m acquainted with the names of most of the world’s global superstars, and I therefore suspect Mr. Mukerjee is a trailhead for one of Dagmar’s elaborate ARGs.
None of the links work at the moment—functionality has to wait till the magic hour of nine-thirty—but there’s a digit counter that informs me I have twelve minutes till the film goes live. I spend the time downloading the free proprietary software necessary to view the picture and finishing off my lamb pilaf.
I stroll along the lawn to the Fairbanks Memorial. It’s getting dark, and I can barely make out the big bronze medallion with the bas-relief profile of Fairbanks Sr., or the carved quote from Hamlet: “Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”—a quote that is also engraved on Tyrone Power’s memorial, a short walk away.
I have prepared a private little ceremony. There’s a small hole in the back of the huge sarcophagus—allegedly for the cheerful purpose of letting gases escape—and I’ve got a piece of NoHo notepaper with a little message. My communication is simple and heartfelt.
PLEASE DOUG LET THIS BE A HIT.
When all is said and done, I’d as soon pray to Douglas Fairbanks as anybody. He was one of the first gods to plant his golden feet in his strange kingdom of Hollywoodland, and he still rules here in the cemetery, his bronze face gazing down the length of the reflecting pond.
I approach the sarcophagus, push the paper into the little rectangular hole, and with a kind of breathless unspoken hope let it fall inside.
Behind the sarcophagus, sandwiched between the sepulcher and the classical portico that surrounds it, there’s a small marble bench. I sit there, in the silent company of Doug and Doug, and I get out the optional folding screen for my Chandra. I unfold it till it’s over two feet across, then dock it to the tablet. I watch the screen light up and await the countdown that will determine my fate.
It’s a pleasant summer evening. There are few people around this corner of the park. My guards have settled into the shadows somewhere and aren’t intruding on my privacy.
Birds call from the trees. The lights in the park are going on. A cool breeze is coming down from the hills, bringing the scent of distant mountain flowers. I sit on the marble seat and imagine that I’m thinking of nothing at all.
The magic hour arrives and the links light up. I click the link for the film and am asked what language I’d like to hear it in, and whether or not I want subtitles. I don’t know what language the folks in Waziristan speak but I assume it’s on the list somewhere. It’s already Saturday morning in Asia, and I imagine scores of people gathering to watch the film in parks, or in cafés, or on riverbanks.
Or not. My nightmare is that no one’s watching at all, that the technology is all too new or too inaccessible or too strange.
I tamp down my fears, choose English, and put in my earbuds while the buffer fills. There’s enough bandwidth to allow everyone in the park to watch the film at the same time. The film begins, and there’s Amir and his friend, walking down the street in New Delhi while credits roll. They’re having a discussion about the difference between the English words carrot and carat, and Amir’s friend riffs a bit on the idea that diamonds are weighed against carrots at the jeweler’s. Then the warehouse collapses, and Amir runs in to help.
I’ve been awaiting my own appearance with trepidation, but by the time Roheen comes lurching out of the rubble like Frankenstein’s monster from a burning mill, I’m not really noticing the sorts of little things that make me crazy when I watch myself. I’m too caught up in the scale of the thing.
I filmed on sets swathed in green screen, and now the green is replaced by shimmering detailed reality. The New Delhi backgrounds are brilliant: they mesh beautifully with the action filmed in California, and the level of detail is astounding. The screen on my tablet seems to have a whole city in it—and it looks like a real city, too, not something obviously created on a computer. I’m fascinated.
Someone planned all this, planned how it would look from the beginning. I realize that my own view of the production has been far, far too limited. Escape to Earth is far grander than I knew.
Adding special effects is usually part of postproduction, and even though fast computers make it a lot easier now, it still takes weeks if not months. I’m completely taken aback when I realize that all this was done ahead of time—it’s pre-, not post-, production. Adding the actors in editing was almost the last thing that happened.
There are two moments of possible interaction with the audience, when the action pauses and we get to decide where the movie is going. I tell Samendra not to inform his father of the existence of Roheen, and I also suggest that he stay behind in New Delhi when Roheen begins his run for the Chinese border.
I get more screen time that way.
Since this is Part I of a serial, it runs only a little short of forty minutes. At the end, Roheen is trudging along a forest track in Uttarakhand, heading for China, and the camera pulls back to reveal the mountain valley that holds the forest. The camera keeps pulling back. Mountains rise like great walls to fence Roheen in. Glaciers fill the high valleys, their color a shimmering, sinister, shivering blue. Finally the great peak of Nanda Devi rises up like a vast menacing goddess barring the path. The camera keeps pulling back, tilting to reveal the great ramparts of the Tibetan plateau ahead. Roheen has long since dwindled into nothingness, overwhelmed by the stony, icy fortress that bars his path.
Dramatic music. End of Part I.
I hear distant applause from the direction of the party. Apparently a lot of people began watching the film at the earliest possible moment, like me, and theirs ended just as mine did.
I rise from the marble bench, aware only now of how badly I’ve cramped. I take a stiff-legged step forward and put both hands on the cool marble sarcophagus.
“Thank you, Doug,” I say.
I undock the screen, fold it, and put both it and the tablet in their carrier. I stretch my limbs and step out of the monument onto the lawn. Crickets are sounding in the air.
I find out later that fifteen million people worldwide subscribed to Escape to Earth during the first twelve hours that it was available. In the next twelve hours the total went up to sixty-five million. By Sunday morning the numbers stand at a hundred and thirty-five million.
That’s a hell of an opening weekend. And the numbers keep climbing.
When I return to the party, I’m a star.
INT. SEAN’S SUITE—DAY
Sunday afternoon I get a call from Joey. I’m half-asleep on my bed at the NoHo, having just had a massage in my suite from one of the hotel’s masseuses, in my case a brawny Lebanese lady named Fawziyah. I’m floating, my mind diffused pleasantly into my warm, tingling, completely relaxed body, when my phone begins its series of hysterical shrieks. I grab the handset, intending just to shut it off, but I see it’s Joey and answer.
“How are you doing?” I ask thickly. I’m trying to drag my brain back from its post-massage nirvana.
“I’ve been better,” he says. “And by the way, thanks for calling the other day.” There is silence. Then, “I really fucked up, didn’t I?”
“I’d say there was hella blame to go around. At least you didn’t try to hit anyone with a laptop.”
“I would have used a shotgun,” he says. “Dagmar emailed an apology, by the way.”
“She apologized to the rest of us, too.”
I swing my legs off the bed and swipe a sheen of sweat off my forehead w
ith a towel. “The premiere went well. The movie looked beautiful. You did a stunning job.”
“Have you seen the numbers?”
“I’m checking every ten minutes. I can’t believe it.”
“Jesus,” he says. “The numbers.” There’s another silence. “Do you think—?”
“Yes?”
He changes tack. “Have I been replaced?”
“Tessa stepped in on Friday, but she’s a stopgap. If we have an actual new director, they haven’t told me. I’m sure they’re calling everyone, but—you know—short notice is a problem.”
“Do you think—?” he says again.
“Do I think what?” Because I know what he’s trying to say, and I know how hard it’s going to be for him.
Escape to Earth is a huge hit. And all the subscription money from those hundred-odd million viewers is going straight into Dagmar’s coffers, she doesn’t have to split it with theater owners or distributors or anybody. I’ll get a chunk of it myself. Once she covers production costs, residuals to certain cast and crew, and the cost of installing infrastructure in places like Waziristan and the Celebes, everything’s pure profit.
And the laws of economics will demand a sequel. And, because the infrastructure costs are already paid for, the sequel will be even more profitable.
Joey can’t walk out on what has become his first hit in five years. He can’t possibly look that ridiculous in public, storming out just ahead of what could be his greatest success. He has to get back in the game.
He sighs. “What are my chances,” he asks, “of getting my job back?”
“Joey,” I point out, “she tried to hit you over the head with a computer.”
“In the heat of the fucking moment. And she apologized.”
I towel my face again, a brisk scrub that I hope will bring blood surging to my head. I do my best to calculate the odds. They don’t seem to be in Joey’s favor.
“It comes down,” I say, “to the amount of shit you’re willing to eat.”
“I’ll eat shit,” he says. “I know perfectly well I have to eat shit.”
“You’ll eat shit from Dagmar,” I point out. “You’ll eat shit from everyone who was at that meeting. And you’ll eat every single spoonful of shit that Carter-Ann feeds you for the next month, and you’ll do it on your knees. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. He sounds dejected. “Yeah, I know that.”
I look down at the floor, still calculating. Now that I’m a star—a star who will inevitably be in the sequel—I maybe have more leverage than I had when I was just a loser in the first round of Celebrity Pitfighter.
It might be worth my while to find out just how much leverage I’ve got.
“I’ll call Dagmar, if you want,” I say. “But only if you’re really serious about crawling your way back into favor.”
“God damn!” Joey says. “You’re the champ!”
“Not yet,” I mutter. I take a needle shower, and I turn the hot water far down, so that I yelp with the sudden cold. My heart lurches into high gear, warm blood and adrenaline flooding my system.
Okay, I’m awake now. Maybe awake enough to deal with Dagmar.
She answers on the first ring. Maybe, I think, I am important.
“A hundred and eighty million,” she says. “As of three minutes ago.”
“Face it,” I say, “we’re all geniuses.”
“Better than that,” Dagmar says, “we’re very, very rich.”
I don’t know what her deal is with Sri, but I’m sure she has more of the gross than I do, and I figure she’s sitting pretty.
“I thought I’d report the details of my security audit,” I tell her. “For starters, Simon wants to get me out of the trailer.”
“I’ve seen a copy of his report.”
Simon started with some fairly sensible recommendations: steel doors and door frames on my condo, barred windows made of one-way glass to prevent anyone from looking inside, cameras and alarms. A panic button worn around the neck that would call security to my aid. An awning on my balcony that would prevent any theoretical snipers from being able to see me. A car with reinforced windows so that no one could toss another Molotov through a window, and with heavy-gauge skid plates attached to vulnerable sections of the underbody to protect it from, say, flaming pools of gasoline—plus of course CCTV focused on my parking place.
After these sensible precautions, Simon’s recommendations advance to what might be called Level II Paranoia: evasive driving courses, firearms courses to supplement my martial arts training, and courses in first aid. I would be wearing body armor in public, or at least have it available. The new car would be heavily armored.
Level III involves a whole new home remodeled along the lines of the Führerbunker, with bedrooms for the guards that would move in with me, and a built-in armored panic room where I could hide in the event of an attack, famine, plague, or nuclear strike.
One of Simon’s recommendations—I would put this at Level II, myself—involves my moving out of my dressing room/trailer, which is overlooked by several tall buildings in the neighborhood and which isn’t bulletproof.
“The Bennett Building has a lot of rooms that were designed as dressing rooms,” Dagmar says. “They’re offices now, or used for storage, but we can move you into one of them on Monday morning.”
“Do you really think someone’s going to try taking a shot at me?” I ask. “So far he’s only been interested in vehicular homicide.”
“I don’t want to roll the dice on that,” Dagmar says. “If my people need protection, they get it. I’ve learned the hard way.”
Odis Strange’s daughter, I think. Took the bullet for Dagmar and died on Cyprus.
I’m not planning on taking a bullet for someone, especially if the someone is me.
“I’ll move in,” I say. “It’s not like I was planning on driving the trailer someplace.”
“All right.
“By the way,” she says, “we’re going to start reshooting the banquet scene tomorrow. Everything else has been pushed back. Do you need a new script?”
“I don’t really remember my lines all that well,” I tell her. We shot it weeks ago, and since the Chinese section of the serial is going to premiere Friday night, the whole thing has to be wrapped up in the next couple days, so that Allison has time to reedit the scene.
“I’ll have a script sent to your room tonight.”
“Do we have a director yet?” I ask.
I hear a sigh. “No. But Tessa worked out all right the other day—and all she has to do is a reshoot tomorrow.”
“I’ve got an idea,” I say.
“Yes?”
“Why don’t we get Joey da Nova? I hear he’s available.”
Dagmar’s tone turns flat. “Not funny, Sean,” she says.
“Dagmar,” I say, “I got a call. Joey wants to come back.”
I hear anger simmering behind Dagmar’s voice. “He’s burned his bridges, hasn’t he?”
“He’s willing to forgive you trying to beat him to death,” I tell her. “I’d say that’s pretty damn generous.”
She barks out a laugh. “Tell me why I should bring him back?”
“Well,” I say, “first, he gave you the hit you were looking for. Second, he’s a terrific director for this project. Third, he’s my friend and I work well with him.” I take a breath. My heart seems to pause. “And lastly, I want him.”
There is a moment of silence on the other end. Both of us, I think, are in the middle of a frantic mental recalibration of the terms of our relationship. Either I have the clout to pull this off, or I don’t. Either she’s willing to make me happy, or she’s not.
Either she has me killed, or she doesn’t.
When she speaks, her voice is thoughtful. “You’ve been a good little trouper, Sean,” she says. “And now you decide to start waving your dick around?”
“I gave up beer for you,” I tell her. “You owe me.”
&nb
sp; “And I’m protecting you from someone who wants you dead,” Dagmar says. “I don’t think I owe you so much as a stick of chewing gum.”
So now the question is, do I push all my chips to the center of the table? Demand that Joey be reinstated, on threat of—of what? Walking off the set?
That is ridiculous. I’d never do it. And I have a strong feeling that Dagmar knows I’d never do it.
“I can tell Joey to call you,” I say. “You can work it out between the two of you.”
“He calls me,” Dagmar says. “He’s the beggar here.”
“Yes,” I say, “yes he is.”
“And tell him not to call till tonight. I’m busy till after dinner.”
“You got it.”
“What I’ve got,” Dagmar says, “is rocks in my head, listening to you like this.”
I thank Dagmar and end the call, then call Joey and relay Dagmar’s message. He’s almost incoherent in his thanks.
“I owe you, champ,” he says. “I fuckin’ owe you.”
Next day he’s on the set, directing the reshoot, and I begin to think I’ve maybe underestimated my clout in this world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HEAVY LUGGAGE BLOG
I’d like to thank everyone who watched Episode I of Escape to Earth. You’ve made the project a huge success. If I could kiss three hundred million people, I would!
Comments (178)
FROM: Jaxon31
Kissing those ppl just means URA fagit like Blogjoy sez!
FROM: Coliseum
Its “fagot” moron.
FROM: Jaxon31
URA fagit too haha
FROM: Danishri
That was a terrific episode! Roheen is a great character!
FROM: Vasudev
Was that filmed here in New Delhi? I think I recognized the neighborhood!
The Fourth Wall Page 21